Tag: Brandon Vera

It’s good to know that we weren’t alone in our confusion when it was announced that the winner of either the Mauricio Rua/Brandon Vera or Lyoto Machida/Ryan Bader bouts, specifically the former, would be in line for the next title shot at 205 lbs. Given that current champion Jon Jones has walked through all four of those gentlemen before, we struggled to find the reasoning behind the alleged title shot that supposedly awaited the most impressive winner from this weekend’s UFC on FOX 4 event. Then again, Rich Franklin has decided to chase after middleweight gold and revenge for a third time (which totally wont end in his untimely death), so maybe we were too quick to write off these former champions, TUF winners, and hype machines. In either case, Bones took to his Twitter account to voice his frustration, sending out the above tweet yesterday which simply states “Scratching my head.”

But perhaps even more confounding than the UFC’s apparent apathy in regards to JBJ was the realization that the light heavyweight division, one of the most stacked and competitive divisions in the UFC for some time, has nearly been cleared out in a little over a year. If Jones gets past Dan Henderson at UFC 151, something he obviously feels he is going to do as evidenced by the above tweet, there will arguably be only two viable candidates left for him to face: Alexander Gustafsson and Glover Teixeira.

Dana White has teased that the man known by the Potato Nation as “Bjones” is “ready for a big fight now”, leading us to believe that a meeting with Rashad Evans could be on the horizon. A victory over the former champ would all but cement the Swede’s position atop the division. As for Teixeira, it’s simply too early to tell. He looked great in his debut victory over Kyle Kingsbury, but needs to face at least one of the upper echelon fighters before we are convinced he is ready for a title shot. But for the moment, it appears that the LHW division needs an H-bomb like Nick Diaz needs a clue.

So said Brandon Vera during yesterday’s hour-long “UFC’s Road to the Octagon” special on FOX, which previewed next weekend’s UFC on FOX: Shogun vs. Vera card in Los Angeles. Vera is well aware that few people are giving him a chance in the night’s headliner — especially considering that he hasn’t had an impressive victory in over three years — but the opportunity to fight Shogun and return to elite-fighter status has given him new motivation for training.

Besides the fact that Shogun was, at the risk of receiving even more hate mail than usual, owned by Jones at UFC 128, the man has gone win-loss in his past six fights for Christ’s sake. Can we at least let him collect two wins in a row before we declare him the top contender in the division? And the last we checked, it isn’t 2006 anymore, so how a win over Vera justifies a title shot is simply beyond any measure of sound reasoning that we could possibly offer you. Is this just a ploy by The Baldfather to try and hype the hype-less card that is UFC on FOX 4, or is the UFC’s matchmaking department on a permanent lunch break? As if the Mendes/McKenzie pairing wasn’t odd enough, now this nonsense happens.

And if you think that was the only baffling decision made by the UFC that we’re going to cover in this article, join us after the jump for an equally ridiculous potential matchup at 205 lbs.

Dana White initially reported that when offered the fight, Shogun’s camp wanted “nothing to do with” Teixeira, a claim that was almost instantly rebuked by Shogun’s camp. Oddly enough, after his camp rebuked such a claim, they immediately accepted a match against Vera, leading one to believe that maybe DW wasn’t bullshitting us as he’s been accused of doing before.

Well during the UFC on FX 3 post fight press conference, White divulged into the “he said/she said” speculation a little further, stating that Shogun was so against fighting Teixeira that he was willing to be cut before taking a fight with him.

A full video of the interview and transcription await you after the jump.

Boetsch will remain on the “Aldo vs. Koch” main card against Hector Lombard, who was scheduled to make his Octagon debut at UFC on FOX 4 two weeks later until Brian Stann pulled out with a dinged shoulder. Lombard vs. Boetsch should be a hell of a brawl — unless losing two weeks of preparation throws the former Bellator champ off his game. Who ya got on that one?

With Lombard off of the UFC on FOX 4 lineup, the August 4th event has picked up a brand new main event…

It’s hard to imagine at this point in his career, but there was a time not too long ago that Brandon Vera was knocking on the door of a heavyweight title shot. Consecutive losses to Tim Sylvia and Fabricio Werdum quickly squashed this notion, and perhaps in an attempt to save his career, Vera dropped to light heavyweight. The results thus far have been nothing short of disastrous.

Since dropping to 205, Vera:
1. Scored a weak UD over Reese Andy in his debut at UFN 14
2. Was made Keith Jardine’s personal whipping boy at UFC 89
3. Was nearly bear hugged to death by Randy Couture at UFC 105
4. Had his face ground into a fine powder by Jon Jones at UFC Live 1
5. Suffered the second most embarrassing loss in UFC history* when Thiago Silva used him as his personal set of bongos before treating his face like that of a three dollar hooker at UFC 125. But hey, the fight was changed to a no-contest, so that’s something, right?
6. Had his arm broken by a guy he was supposed to destroy at UFC 137.

Silva, who is returning from a one-year suspension for submitting artificial urine to the California State Athletic Commission in an attempt to mask steroid use ahead of his UFC 125 win over Brandon Vera, was originally slated to rematch “The Truth” at UFC on Fuel 3 on May 15 before a training injury forced his opponent out of the bout. Igor Pokrajac stepped up to replace Vera, but it looks like the UFC will now have to find a replacement for the Croation.

Before dropping a unanimous decision to Nate Diaz at UFC 141, Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone had arguably the best 2011 of any fighter out there, scoring victories over Paul Kelly, Vagner Rocha, Charles Oliveira, and Dennis Siver, three of which came by way of stoppage. And although he ended the year on a loss, Cerrone will be looking to start off 2012 with a big win when he takes on 60 fight veteran Yves Edwards at UFC on FX 3, which goes down at the Patriot Center in Fairfax, Virginia on May 15th.

The report we filed two days ago on the Brandon Vera-Thiago Silva grudge match is already woefully out of date. According to “The Truth”, he was so eager to ‘welcome’ Silva back to the Octagon that he jumped the gun and accepted the rematch before discussing the bout with his coaches or doctors. A consultation with his physician revealed that he wouldn’t be recovered from an injury in time for the May 15th fight.

Lavar Johnson scored the Knockout of the Night during last weekend’s UFC on FOX 2 card, by smashing Joey Beltran in the first round of their preliminary card meeting. The win snapped a two-fight losing streak that Johnson had carried over from his stint in Strikeforce. His upcoming scrap with Barry seems like a way for the UFC to guarantee some much-needed excitement for their next FOX broadcast. As for Barry, it’s an opportunity to bump his UFC record over .500 and secure back-to-back victories for the first time in his UFC career.